Wife stabbed suspected rival

Amil Regina Cotes-Incinosa was sentenced last week to 12 months’ imprisonment after admitting that she had stabbed a woman whom she believed was “hitting on” her husband.

She was initially accused of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after two incidents in West Bay in the early hours of Friday, Feb. 16. The Crown later accepted a plea to a lesser charge of wounding and one of carrying an offensive weapon.

Sentencing judge Justice Carlisle Greaves looked at photographs of the injuries and said he thought the victim was extremely lucky – “not because of the will of the defendant, but perhaps just divine luck that the knife did not go a little further to the right or to the left in the bridge of her nose, as she might have lost her eye.” If that had happened, he pointed out, Ms. Incinosa, 40, would have been facing a more serious outcome.

Senior Crown counsel Nicole Petit explained that the complainant was walking along Birch Tree Hill Road when the defendant came out of a vehicle and started walking toward her with a knife in her hand and saying, “I gone kill you.” The complainant said she was then stabbed and felt as if she had lost consciousness.

She decided to go home and change before she went to police because her T-shirt was bloody. On her way to the police station, she again encountered the defendant, who again threatened to kill her. She said she raised her right hand in defense and as a result sustained a stab round to that hand. She fled the scene, flagged down a passing police vehicle and told officers what had happened.

She was taken to hospital, where she received stitches to a 3.5 centimeter (1.4 inch) laceration to the mid-forehead and a three-centimeter laceration to her hand. Based on the photographs and what was said in the victim impact report, it was safe to say that the woman, 35, “will have some level of scarring from the injuries.” Her medical bills totalled $603.87.

When interviewed, Ms. Incinosa told police that the other woman had been constantly making requests of her husband for money and it was her opinion that the woman might also be trying to “hit on” Mr. Incinosa. She said that, while she was insulting the complainant, she saw an object in the other woman’s hand that resembled a blade and felt as if she would be attacked. She said it was then that she took out her knife from her backpack and stabbed her.

The Crown did not accept that the victim was armed.

Defense attorney Neil Kumar acknowledged that the offense had occurred in the context of heavy drinking. She had been in a relationship with her husband for five years.

Ms. Incinosa said she was deeply sorry for what she had done and asked for mercy for the sake of her children.

In passing sentence, Justice Greaves said he was puzzled how one woman could attack another so violently over a man. “I myself, being a man full of love to give to the world, am not convinced that any of us men are worthy of fighting over…. It seems to me that if you had a dispute about the behavior of your man and the other woman…, it seems that you should deal with that with him, and I’m not saying violently.”

The judge commented that the husband “must be man enough to be able to represent himself if he felt he was being harassed by the complainant in this case.

I doubt that any real man would need his wife to go out there and put up some violent fight on his behalf with another woman.”

The judge adapted something he said his mother had taught him – “There are two things in life not worth fighting over: a man and a bus. One goes, another comes.”

He used one year as the starting point for sentence and said the aggravating factors raised that to 18 months. A one-third discount for the guilty plea, however, took the sentence back down to 12 months.

He did not order any compensation. A six-month sentence for the offensive weapon is to run concurrently.